DAWES SEVERALTY ACT

The Dawes General Allotment (Severalty) Act, February 8, 1887, converted all Indian tribal lands to individual ownership in an attempt to facilitate the assimilation of Indians into the white culture. Pressure for a reform in Indian policy was triggered by Helen Hunt Jackson's book, A Century of Dishonor (1881), which chronicled the unjust treatment American Indians had received at the hands of the federal government. Indian Rights associations sprang up across the country, and consensus grew that Indians must be helped to become full members of American society. The reformers saw the traditional patterns of Indian culture as the principal obstacle to meaningful citizenship; their first task, they believed, was to end the nomadism and isolation of reservation life. The new law was thus tailored to attack a central institution of Indian culture, common ownership of tribal lands.

Under the Dawes Act, Indian tribes lost legal standing, and tribal lands were divided among the individual members. In exchange for renouncing their tribal holdings, Indians would become American citizens and would receive individual land grants—160 acres to family heads, 80 acres to single adults. Even these grants were qualified, however; full ownership would come only after the expiration of a twenty-five-year federal trust. (In 1906, the Burke Act waived the remaining trust for all Indians judged competent to handle their property independently.)

The Dawes Act significantly undermined Indian tribal life, but did little to further their acceptance into the broader society. In addition, the law severely reduced Indian holdings; after all individual allocations had been made, the extensive lands remaining were declared surplus and opened for sale to non-Indians. In 1887, the tribes had owned about 138 million acres; by 1900 the total acreage in Indian hands had fallen to 78 million. This policy was not reversed until 1934, when the Indian Reorganization Act asserted the importance of perpetuating Indian cultural institutions and permitted surplus lands to be returned to tribal ownership.

See also Indians.